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Sony Corp. (6758) promoted Kazuo Hirai, the company’s games division chief, paving the way for the executive to potentially succeed Howard Stringer as head of the maker of PlayStation consoles and Bravia televisions.

Hirai, 50, was named a representative corporate executive officer and will add televisions, cameras and camcorders to his responsibilities starting April 1, Tokyo-based Sony said in a statement today. Stringer will remain chairman, chief executive officer and president, it said.

The promotion helps Hirai surpass Hiroshi Yoshioka as the highest-ranking executive among Stringer’s top lieutenants, also known as the “Four Musketeers.” The move gives Stringer, who turned 69 last month, a deputy to lighten his work and travel load as Sony prepares for an eventual leadership change at Japan’s largest exporter of consumer electronics.

“Hirai looks like he’s got the inside track to be Stringer’s successor,” said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments Ltd. in Tokyo. "Stringer must have valued Hirai’s performance in turning around Sony’s game division.’’

Sony fell 1.1 percent to 2,864 yen at 12:54 p.m. in Tokyo today, set for its fourth consecutive day of declines.

As part of the revamp, Sony will reorganize its businesses to combine consumer electronics and network services functions under the umbrella of the Consumer Products & Services Group, it said. Business-to-business, components and semiconductor operations will be part of the Professional & Device Solutions Group, it said.

New Structure

Yoshioka, who currently oversees the consumer products group that includes, TVs and camcorders, will be in charge of the group that makes devices and products used by professionals, according to the statement.

“This new organizational and management structure is intended to enable Mr. Stringer to continue to implement his group-wide strategic vision, while also empowering the next generation of Sony’s management to focus on current operations as well as long-term growth and development of the company’s core businesses,” Sony said.

According to people familiar with the matter in November, Sony planned to search for a new president who could eventually succeed Stringer. Hirai and Yoshioka were the leading internal contenders, the people said at the time.

Since 2009, Stringer has been grooming four executives as he pushes Sony’s divisions to marry hardware products with film, TV, game titles and music from the company’s entertainment businesses. With the exception of Hirai, Sony’s “musketeers” are all engineers by trade.

Cutting Jobs

Stringer replaced division leaders to spur cooperation and cut 30,000 jobs to revive earnings. Sony has been trying to boost sales by promoting 3-D products and being first in offering Internet-oriented TVs that run on Google Inc. (GOOG) software and Intel Corp. (INTC) chips.

Stringer travels frequently between his main office in New York, Sony’s Tokyo headquarters, the movie division in Los Angeles and London where his family lives. He said in 2009 he wanted to remain on the job until Sony completes its business plan ending in March 2013.

Hirai started his career at a joint venture between Sony and CBS, now called Sony Music Entertainment Inc., in 1984. He was named president of Sony’s U.S. game unit in 1999. The executive, fluent in Japanese and English, was brought up in the U.S. and Japan.

Oldest ‘Musketeer’

Yoshioka, the oldest of the “musketeers” at 58, has overseen the consumer products group that includes TVs, stereos, DVD and Blu-ray players and camcorders. Batteries and semiconductors are also handled at his group.

Stringer, who holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees in history from Oxford University, joined Sony in 1997 after a career spanning two decades at CBS. The Welsh-born U.S. citizen became chairman and CEO in 2005 after winning the endorsement of his predecessor, Nobuyuki Idei, who oversaw the loss of more than 60 percent of Sony’s market value over five years as Apple and Samsung gained market share.

Stringer scored a victory over Toshiba Corp. (6502), which abandoned its HD DVD technology in 2008, handing the high- definition video market to Sony’s Blu-ray. It was the entertainment industry’s largest format tussle since VHS beat Betamax in the 1980s.

Stringer also oversaw the biggest recall in the consumer- electronics industry in 2006 when some of the company’s batteries overheated. He led Sony during the company’s first back-to-back annual losses since its listing. Under Stringer, the company’s flagship PlayStation 3 was outsold by Nintendo’s Wii, and sales of Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle trumped those of Sony’s rival electronic-book reader.

Under Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka, who co-founded Sony in 1946, the company created Japan’s first transistor radio and the world’s first compact disc player. Morita’s admirers included Apple founder Steve Jobs, according to John Sculley, former CEO of Apple.

Kaz is like the only reason why Sony has brought in, albeit small, profits with the PS3. After Ken Kutaragi dug the company a big grave, it's amazing that they started to recover now. Expected them to recover later rather than sooner.

Also, I'm sorry, but to all the people who said "piracy will make hundreds of people lose jobs at Sony because of the PS3 keys" and all that other excuse bullcrap. Sony just cut 30,000 NOT because of it.

Even though this article is from a year ago, they still haven't recouped their losses. And their financial reports since the publication of this article show further losses in the PS division. (Although some people claim those losses were from the failure of the PSP Go and the decline of the PSP market.)

So even though they may finally be selling PS3 hardware for a profit, they still have a long way to go before they make up for all the money they lost.

I feel sorry for the 30,000 people who lost their jobs. Typical corporate BS. Reward a failure with a better position and a higher sallary while you send 30,000 people to the unemployment office. Anyway they're just bumping Kaz up the ladder because everyone was disappointed with Stringer.

That's from 2009 dude. They just started making a profit in last june I believe.. something like that.QUOTE(SPH73 @ Mar 10 2011, 09:16 PM) So even though they may finally be selling PS3 hardware for a profit, they still have a long way to go before they make up for all the money they lost.

its quite big to fire 30000 ppl at once. It must be a great change that is needed it would seem. This may be an indication as said above that piracy on the ps3 would be really bad as their PS3s would cause more loss than any profit

That's from 2009 dude. They just started making a profit in last june I believe.. something like that.QUOTE(SPH73 @ Mar 10 2011, 09:16 PM) So even though they may finally be selling PS3 hardware for a profit, they still have a long way to go before they make up for all the money they lost.

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True enough, but to be clear:

"Operating profit more than doubled in [Hirai's] network products and services division in October-December last year..."